From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Mon Jan 06 2003 - 04:28:20 MST
Lee Corbin said:
> Do you believe in Sapir/Whorf? By that I mean the hypothesis
> that our vocabulary and grammar greatly influence our thoughts?
> I only weakly believe in it; sure, a lot of our thought would
> be impossible without language, and I also believe that the
> speakers of some languages, e.g. Japanese and French, end up
> with a tiny few differences from those of us who's primary
> language is English.
I can confirm that. As a native German speaker I may end up with a totally
different post if I started writing in German to a German speaking community
as if I had started writing about the same topic on the extropy list. Though
I might have started with the same initial thoughts when writing in English,
there may pop up specific linguistic twists and turns when writing in German
that would have never been raised if I had started in English. One term
leads to another, so the initial serious beginning might end up in a parody,
some metaphors or innovative word games inflame other linguistic
associations, and there you are: ending up with a totally different post.
So, yes, the languange you are most familiar with influences your writings
in relevant and considerable ways.
Hubert Mania
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